Cartoons are a form of visual art, including drawings or text. Sometimes, a cartoon is a humorous or satirical drawing published in mass media, such as a newspaper or magazine. Cartoons can have specific characteristics, depending on a cartoon style. For example, cartoons can include clearly articulated lines, bold colors or black and white colors, removing color variations, and exaggerated features.
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Photographs can be created with a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The process of creating photographs is called photography. Photographs are noted for their realism and life-like details. Digital photographs can be distorted through various techniques, including skewing, coloration change, outlines, and other techniques.
It is sometimes desirable to create cartoons from existing photographs. For example, such cartoons can be used as online avatars, unique art gifts, or in various print and display media.
Existing approaches execute as software at a client. For example, software can be downloaded and installed at a user workstation, where it interacts with the user to retrieve and cartoonize an image. It is desirable to provide a cartoonizer tool to users over a network. This allows a server, which can be very powerful, to execute the processing necessary to cartoonize an image.
In addition, it is desirable to utilize a cartoonization process that produces a more cartoon-like output. Thus, what is needed is an improved cartoonization service easily accessible to users for creating cartoons from user-submitted digital photographs.